A Boy with a Guitar
by pruplup4
Summary: It's raining in London. Lestrade takes a little morning detour that leads to a trip down memory lane. Headcanon borrowed from "What You Don't Know About Greg Lestrade", by LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate — read chapters 2 and 3, and you'll know what I mean.


**AN:** I love Lestrade, and I don't think he gets enough love. The fic "What You Don't Know about Greg Lestrade" is a fantastic character study and work of listing fiction. I highly recommend if you are in the same school of thought as me and would marry Lestrade in a hot second. This is a little exercise inspired by some of the headcanon regarding Lestrade's past that is illustrated in chapters 1-3. Enjoy!

It's raining in London. He doesn't know why this fact continues to surprise him, given he's been here for twenty-odd years and hell, it's _London_ , but nevertheless, there's a tug of surprise in his gut when he sees raindrops on his window. It is the constancy, perhaps, or the sheer determination with which the rain falls, like it has an agenda, a personal vendetta. He admires it, honestly. Or rather, he does when he is ensconced safely indoors.

A trickle of water finds its way under the collar of his threadbare mac. He should really buy a new one; showing up sopping wet to the office as often as he does is borderline unprofessional, but he knows he won't ever make the effort. He debates popping the collar for added protection, but considering the ribbing he gives Sherlock for doing the same, he'd rather brave a spot of rain than become an object of the boy's jeers. Not that he'll see him today, but Lestrade is semi-certain that Sherlock is halfway to omniscience.

Instead he ducks his head and continues on his way, his shoes skittering on the wet glaze that clings to the pavement. At 7:00 am on a Tuesday morning, the walk is thankfully not as crowded as it might be in a half hour or so, but Westminster is a busy district, and he finds himself jostling for space every now and again.

The distance from his flat is enough that he should take a cab, or at least ride the tube for some part of it – Sherlock insists on the cab-calling for his _image_ , Lestrade suspects – but detective inspectors don't make enough to toss thirty quid around each morning. Anyway, the walk is too much to give up, because for as much as the weather is a wank, the city is a sight.

It is early October, and summer has bled thoroughly into autumn, lending a particular bite to the air. London's autumn is breathtaking: the wind whistles past the buildings with force enough to make the whole city shiver down to its foundations, and the streets reverberate with the sound of leaves rustling, though there may not be trees for blocks and blocks. That's something else – London is a concrete jungle, but it has moments of green so sharp and sudden that never fail to take Lestrade's breath away, even if he does see them every morning. As he turns off from Victoria towards Broadway, with Westminster Abbey looming in the distance, a grove of trees huddles with grim determination between a set of shimmering glass buildings. _Old as Methuselah_ , his ma would say. Thick-trunked and weary, a mere facsimile of the green-studded forest that stood here before the growth of men. It's an oddly staid reminder of the city's age, right up against its dizzying modernity.

Lestrade gives that a mental once-over as he idles at the crosswalk and waits for the rush of cars to die down. The pounding of the rain has plastered his hair to his forehead, and he squints up against the drops as he considers the trees, their heads bowed as though in prayer. He'll look a proper fright when he shuffles through security, but it's not as if they're paying him for his dashing looks.

In front of him, the streetlight changes. The pedestrians around him rush forward all at once towards the zebra crossing. He resumes his walk, falling into the rhythm of a Londoner as he heads towards Scotland Yard.

All in all, he considers it a good place, London. It could stand for a bit more sun, but then it wouldn't be the same. Lestrade likes how London makes you work for it – it's tough and gloomy, and expensive as all bollocks, but when the clouds break through and the stink of the Thames lifts for a moment, the city seems to pause, take stock of itself. It's almost contemplative, even reflective. It sounds like a bit of a nob thing to say, and sometimes Lestrade laughs at himself for it, but it's the truth. It takes years of living here to see how sly London is. You have to live with it for a while and learn the rhythms of it – see past the irate cabbies, swells of yammering tourists and unending rains – before the city lets you see beneath.

 _Like a marriage_ , Lestrade thinks. It takes living with a woman for a spell before you learn her, to know her twists and turns without a word between you. Or you think you do, and then one day you come home and she's rolling around on the mattress with the PE teacher.

The surge of bitterness that he feels coincides – even cause, if he's fanciful – with an uptick in the strength of the downpour. Some of the pedestrians around him evaporate, heading into cafés and other hiding-holes to wait out the momentary deluge.

He's got time, so he decides to do the same. He weaves around a harassed-looking older man in a suit and ducks under the awning of a coffee shop, trying to get some of the water off so that he won't track it in.

While he's shaking his head in attempt to dry his hair, he hears a tinkling laugh. He opens his eyes to see a little girl, no more than three years old. She clutches her mother's trouser leg in one hand as she grins up at him in sheer delight. In answer, he makes a face and shakes his head again, like a dog, which prompts a spray of water to leap from his hair like a halo. It draws a bubble of high-pitched laughter from the girl, before the door swings shut and she and her mother disappear into the warmth of the coffee shop.

A faint smile lingers on his face as he follows them in. It's crowded, but most of the volume is concentrated at the counter in a crush of bleary-eyed office workers, joshing for their overpriced caffeine fixes. Lestrade manages to snag a seat by the window, away from the din of shouted drink orders and beeping milk steamer alarms.

He set his briefcase down and pulls out a file, intending to catch up on work till the zenith of storm ebbs. It's an intriguing case – a med student found keeled over her books in the depths of night, staked through the heart with a harpoon of dubious origins. He does try, making notes on possible leads as he thumbs through Molly's autopsy findings. But as the minutes tick by, he can feel himself growing weary, the crime scene photographs melding together into a blur of blood and viscera.

He rarely gets in on non-violent crimes, but as Sherlock says, the criminal classes do occasionally exhaust their ingenuity. With London being what it is – a city with millions of people – these lulls in cases are far and few between, and while Sherlock gripes about them endlessly, Lestrade cherishes them. What is _interesting_ to Sherlock is rarely that for Lestrade. Even if some cases are mind-numbing and produce more paperwork than should be strictly legal, nothing will ever make him crave the adrenaline rush of a gun chase, or a showdown with a serial psycho, or whatever it is that Sherlock loves. For Lestrade, _interesting_ usually means a visit to a house, an identification at the morgue, and sleepless months of guilt, caffeine, and too much paperwork.

Pretty much every case ever involves far too much paperwork.

He tries to keep his focus, but eventually gives it up for a lost cause and shuffles the files back into his briefcase with a sigh of defeat. Instead he turns his attention to the window, idly watching the few stragglers as they hurry to their destinations. He's no Sherlock Holmes, but he's always liked people-watching; he likes to take a stab at who they are and where they're coming from and why they see fit to walk around in a torrential downpour. It's what makes him a good cop, because while he can't _see_ things the way Sherlock does, he never stops trying to.

The wall of people at the counter dissolves somewhat as the minutes tick by. In the new quietness, Lestrade becomes aware of an undercurrent thrumming in the background. He glances over his shoulder and sees a small musical set-up in the corner, consisting of a simple stool, mike stand, and a man with a guitar.

Not a man, really. Little more than a boy, with too-long limbs and a spattering of spots across his face and stringy hair that hasn't seen a comb since Adam, probably. He's holding the guitar with love in his hands, cradling it like it's a human child.

Little more than a boy with a guitar, like Lestrade was once.

He recognizes him — or at least he recognizes that look in the boy's eye. There's an intensity there that few people ever truly experience in their lives; it's the way Sherlock looks at a crime scene, the way Molly Hooper looks during a particularly tricky autopsy. The boy loves this guitar more than his own life.

With half-lidded eyes, the boy cocks his head to one side as he listens to the pitch, compares it to some standard in his head. Lestrade hasn't picked up his own guitar since Rebecca, and he doubts he ever will, but he still feels satisfaction when he hears the dark buzz of low E, perfectly tuned.

Lestrade grabs his briefcase and navigates through the shop till he's seated closer to the guitar. The boy doesn't notice. In that moment, his world is the guitar. Lestrade understands.

Tuning complete, the boy begins tinkering with a gentle run of chords, starting out and slow and languorous. Eventually the chords turn into arpeggios – odd choice for metal strings, but Lestrade is too entranced to wonder – which settle into a familiar tune. The boy opens his mouth, and in a thin, reedy, beautiful voice, he begins to sing.

 _Are you going to Scarborough Fair?_

 _Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_

 _Remember me to the one who lives there_

 _She was once a true love of mine._

 _Tell her to make me a cambric shirt_

 _Parsley sage rosemary and thyme_

 _Without no seams nor needlework_

 _Then she'll be a true love of mine._

 _Tell her to find me an acre of land_

 _Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_

 _Between the salt water and the sea strand_

 _She'll be a true love of mine._

 _Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather_

 _Parsley sage rosemary and thyme_

 _And gather it all in a bunch of heather_

 _Then she'll be a true love of mine._

 _Are you going to Scarborough Fair?_

 _Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_

 _Remember me to one who lives there_

 _She once was a true love of mine . . ._

The arpeggios waver as the song wraps up, then fade in the rumble of the coffee shop. Lestrade opens his eyes slowly, not wanting the spell to break. The boy is frozen in place, his right hand hovering over the bridge, his left holding the guitar neck in a gentle caress. On his face is an expression of pure and utter bliss. Lestrade smiles at the sight.

The boy opens his eyes with reluctance, then casts his gaze about the shop with undeniable hope and more than a hint of resignation. The customers are wrapped up in their mobiles and newspapers, barely glancing away to place and grab their orders; the baristas talk and shout orders across the bar, their hands a flurry of activity. No one notices the music that the boy with the guitar has put out into the world.

Except Lestrade. Before he realizes what he's doing, he's up and out of his seat, his hand grasping in his pocket. He strides up to the open guitar case on the floor and with one smooth motion, he empties out the contents of his wallet onto the red velvet.

He looks up at the boy, who stares at him with utter shock. It's almost comical — his eyes are wide and his mouth is agape, like he's forgotten how to close it. Lestrade chances a glance at the case. Well, he'd probably look like that too, if some old copper had given him 110 pounds for singing a bit of Simon and Garfunkel.

"Don't stop playing," Lestrade says. His voice is hoarse and it comes out a lot harsher than he wanted it to. "Don't ever stop."

The boy gapes a bit longer, then recovers enough to stammer, "Never, I would never."

Lestrade turns sharply on his heel then, swiping his briefcase from the window seat as he passes on his way towards the door. As he flips the collar of his mac up, a flash of a memory comes back to him.

A girl with long brown hair and a delicate soprano, beaming at him as he sang to her. She was a lovely girl, Rebecca. From the moment she bumped into him at the musical audition, he knew that she was a spectacular human being. He remembers everything about her — the band, rehearsals, kissing sessions disguised as study dates. He remembers, too, the day he hung up his guitar, still dressed in the black suit he'd bought for her funeral, the first of his life.

At the center of it all, there was him and his guitar, wound around the little finger of a girl who would forever remain sixteen.

The door of the coffee shop swings open, and the tinkling noise reminds Lestrade of where he is, who he is now. He hasn't thought of Rebecca in some time. He hasn't been the boy with the guitar for a while now. He squares his shoulders, grips his briefcase, and strides out the door with the bright step of a Londoner, a confidence he has never felt before.

It's raining in London. Usually, Lestrade can admire it — the constancy with which it falls, like it has an agenda, a personal vendetta. He loves the rain and the city and his life, doing the difficult, but honest and true and rewarding work of being a copper.

But today — today, Lestrade wishes for things that he has long accepted were gone, for a future that once felt completely assured.

Today, Lestrade wishes to be anywhere but here.

 **AN:** I don't live in London and I've only visited twice, so I did some "research" about street names and used creative license for the rest of it. Hopefully it worked out. Also, in my head, Lestrade totally has the hots for Molly, but he thinks he's too old for her and she's too enamored with Sherlock, so he does nothing. Maybe I'll write something about that one day. Thanks for reading! Please comment what you think, it'll make a poor student suffering through finals very very happy! 


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